I worked in a Manchester supermarket during the holidays when I was a student. One of the full timers in the warehouse was a complete idiot. Some highlights of his exploits…

Slagging the boss off whilst in the toilets, only for the boss to emerge from one of the cubicles.

Being caught “waxing his dolphin” by the CCTV cameras installed in the locker room to catch a thief. A particularly numb thing to do as this was the 1980s and the surveillance equipment was less than discrete. It could clearly be seen through the massive holes they had punched in the ceiling tiles to fit it.

Turning up for a staff football match off his face on speed. In his head he was moving like Linford Christie, to everyone else he was in slow motion.

None of these events got him fired. I have no idea what he did when they eventually did give him the bullet but it must have been epic.

Catching shop lifters was always a treat back in the day. We would frog march them into the produce buffer room and if they put up a fight all the butchers and bakers would come steaming in with various rolling pins, nylon mallets and other implements. Whilst they were leathering one guy a gun fell out of his pocket!

The best thief was the bloke who tried to steal a compacted cardboard bale form the loading bay. As he tried to get it in the back of his van it fell on him and pinned him to the floor. We all came out to have a good look and a laugh before someone called the police… about 2 hours later.

Again while working for Harper Cycles, it ended up with the boss driving a taxi to make money – one night he got an emergency call on the radio, one of the other drivers was being mugged. All the firm’s drivers raced to the scene.

Now I don’t know about other Glasgow taxi firms, but this one was stuffed full of ex-cons from Barlinnie. They caught the mugger, and didn’t touch a hair on his head, just described to him in detail exactly what they were going to do to him, then after an hour or so phoned the police.

Apparently the police have never had a criminal so happy to see them.

I had a summer job at Portbury docks near Portishead and Bristol. The job was driving brand new hondas (this was 19 years ago) when the dockers had unloaded them from the boat and we would then go and park them return to the office and then pick cars and line them up for car transporters to take to dealers.
The dodgy bit is that all cars were treated as race cars, revved to max from cold, clutch dropped, wheel spinned and maxxed all the way from A to B. Two guys were fired when racing the guy in front thought it would be a laugh to slam on the brakes. Cue rear end smash and front of one car totalled. Both guys dismissed.
We got to drive the honda legends (brilliant in the summer; ice cold air con and decent radio). Favourites were the first generation preludes with 2.2 engines.
It was always slightly amusing to imagine the typical retired owner lovingly running the engine in for 2000 miles when the first 12 ‘delivery’ miles had been with the engine bouncing off the rev limiter.

christmas office party season is upon us… this thread should get some updates over the next few weeks 😈

I can’t comprehend why anyone would voluntarily go to an office Christmas party. I’d rather remove my own kidneys with a teaspoon

deadslow – the guy that used to import these;

couldn’t understand why they had so many warranty claims for premature engine wear.

Until he went down to see them being unloaded off a ship once.

The drivers were all behaving as you describe…

Forgot to add the best one…

Conversation amongst the Saturday boys explaining to the new lads exactly who was misbehaving with who.

“…and he (insert name of deputy manager) is shagging (insert name of woman)” To which one of the new lads pipes up “That’s my mum!”.

Is that a De Tomaso Pantera?

Our Christmas party tonight and the talk is of utter carnage, everyone has got at least 5 free drink tokens 😯

This is the last party under our current name and people seem hell bent on making it memorable.

the boss has paid for unlimited beers, wine and other drinks tonight so it could be entertaining….

madjeski stadium, predictable food, rubbish music, crowded, but hundreds of wimmin in nice outfits

Working in Key Markets supermarket many years ago we had a warehouse on the first floor. Stock was shifted downstairs in a lift and we had a high turnover of warehousemen. We used to put large empty boxes in the lift, press the up button, get in the box and wait for one of the warehousemen to open the doors. Next would come the comedy jump out and scare the shit out of them. One week I was in the box waiting for a new guy, doors opened as usual and the box was dragged out of the lift. I then jumped out and scared the utter shit out of the store manager who was showing a newbie the ropes.

The practise ended there and then. I spent the next few weeks on fat trap duty.

FD was CCTV’d running around a hotel naked at 5am last Christmas. The women on reception were having a right good laugh when we asked to see it.

He’d gone out of the wrong door of his room when needing a pee!

It’s been six years, so I can talk about this now…

…I used to work for a family run accountancy firm in East Anglia. It was the type of place where small-mindedness and big ambitions went hand in glove, most of the staff were Alpha Males unless they were female, when they were invariably pretty. The senior partner was approaching his seventies and was anxious to keep his son and son in law in their place, so he used to throw his weight around and overrule managers left, right and centre. The trouble was that his memory wasn’t great and he’d invariably cause chaos and make every job he meddled with blow it’s budget. It wasn’t long before a clandestine campaign to oust him was started.

The plan was to convince the other partners that the senior was incompetent, so people would break into his office, shred every tenth piece of paper they found and randomly delete files on his laptop. Things began to get way out of hand, but not before a small group of individuals started pissing on the senior’s office furniture in an attempt to convince everyone that he’d become senile and incontinent.

It didn’t work.

I had a summer job at Portbury docks near Portishead and Bristol. The job was driving brand new hondas (this was 19 years ago) when the dockers had unloaded them from the boat and we would then go and park them return to the office and then pick cars and line them up for car transporters to take to dealers.
The dodgy bit is that all cars were treated as race cars, revved to max from cold, clutch dropped, wheel spinned and maxxed all the way from A to B. Two guys were fired when racing the guy in front thought it would be a laugh to slam on the brakes. Cue rear end smash and front of one car totalled. Both guys dismissed.
We got to drive the honda legends (brilliant in the summer; ice cold air con and decent radio). Favourites were the first generation preludes with 2.2 engines.
It was always slightly amusing to imagine the typical retired owner lovingly running the engine in for 2000 miles when the first 12 ‘delivery’ miles had been with the engine bouncing off the rev limiter.

So things don’t change! I worked for a Main dealer a fair few years ago, that was town centre based & had a compound about 3 miles out of town.

Every day people would take the new & used sold stock up there prior to prep etc. I’ve never seen such abuse of cars! Not just wheelspins & handbrake turns, there were proper handbrake on burnouts, high speed chases, clutchless gearchanges, rev limiter challenge (do the whole thing banging it off the limiter), etc etc.

It got more & more out of hand, until one day the MD/owner hit a concrete bollard on the compound entrance & rolled a customers brand new executive saloon car into 3 other customers cars awaiting prep 😯

I had a summer job at Portbury docks near Portishead and Bristol. The job was driving brand new hondas (this was 19 years ago) when the dockers had unloaded them from the boat and we would then go and park them return to the office and then pick cars and line them up for car transporters to take to dealers.
The dodgy bit is that all cars were treated as race cars, revved to max from cold, clutch dropped, wheel spinned and maxxed all the way from A to B. Two guys were fired when racing the guy in front thought it would be a laugh to slam on the brakes. Cue rear end smash and front of one car totalled. Both guys dismissed.
We got to drive the honda legends (brilliant in the summer; ice cold air con and decent radio). Favourites were the first generation preludes with 2.2 engines.
It was always slightly amusing to imagine the typical retired owner lovingly running the engine in for 2000 miles when the first 12 ‘delivery’ miles had been with the engine bouncing off the rev limiter.

So things don’t change! I worked for a Main dealer a fair few years ago, that was town centre based & had a compound about 3 miles out of town.

Every day people would take the new & used sold stock up there prior to prep etc. I’ve never seen such abuse of cars! Not just wheelspins & handbrake turns, there were proper handbrake on burnouts, high speed chases, clutchless gearchanges, rev limiter challenge (do the whole thing banging it off the limiter), etc etc.

It got more & more out of hand, until one day the MD/owner hit a concrete bollard on the compound entrance & rolled a customers brand new executive saloon car into 3 other customers cars awaiting prep 😯

The stories about how the cars are treated at the docks are commonplace in the trade, as are all the others about new cars falling off transporters, squashed under them, run over….

Thats why most manufacturers have their bodyshops at the docks. A fair few new cars have metalwork & paint before they even get to the dealer & they start on it!

Pretty shocking really.

Tis my Xmas Party on 20th. Our office is made up of my boss and me and one other bloke full time. His last day at the company is 20th and mine is 21st. The boss got done for DUI and has since gone teetotal. I have never EVER been less excited by a Christmas party…pretty sure there wont be amusing anecdotes from that

Nearly 20 years in publishing…

Large local / regional paper in the mid 90s. As the internet is still a fancy young thing, we still make heavy use of the clippings library. Folders of clippings on people, things, and places going back 80 years are moved hither and yon by a lovely young chap with Downs Syndrome. He is universally adored by the staff. One day, the inkies show him round the print hall, which makes up the core of the building (during print runs, the entire building shakes, and tacups have standing waves in them). He is shown the Big Red Buttons, placed at various strategic points to give the impression that, should an unfortunate have a piece of their clothing caught in a roller, they have more than a snowball’s chance in hell of not being immediately ground to death.

Sure enough, fifteen minutes later, £6,000 worth of Early Edition is trashed as the presses grind to a halt. No-one had the heart to so much as tell him off.

Late 90s, small publishing house in London run by an iconoclastic chap known for being a little, er, zany. We’re in the boardroom, hearing from the sales monkeys the various excuses they have for not booking as many ads for the magazine as the previous quarter. Company owner comes marching past the boardroom’s full length windows with senior execs in tow. Sees us. Plasters himself, full length, against the window and begins to lick it, all the while fixing us with a googly-eyed stare.

Late 90s, enormous dull publishing house south of London. One of the titles there is concerned with railways. A staffer is discovered at his desk cracking one out over a photo of a locomotive.

Early ’00s – another small publishing company in Soho, this time run by an egomaniac with psychopathic tendancies.

1) The testosterone – addled IT manager shows me his TVR on the first day, and explains how he likes to drive it along Old Street, cruising for younger ladies. No-one has told him that he’s likely to attract an entirely different type of attention.

2) Same IT manager ignores symptoms of diabetes, finally realising he has a problem when trying to add more Cat 5 to the building’s tottery network at 2am one night. The network cables are run in the ceiling void. He falls off his ladder, bringing the false ceiling down with him. The wire service news desk spends a day with bits of ceiling inches from their head, constantly expecting a further collapse.

3) New staffer hazing ritual for the magazine I work on is to read pages 123 – 126 of the founder / CEO’s pisspoor porn novel, written under a pseudonym, without gagging.

4) It emerges that CEO has dangled an employee out of the window by his ankles after he resigns.

There’s more, but I’m on deadline.

Many years ago when I worked in that there London I rolled into work one Monday morning following the staff crimbo do the preceding Friday. Everyone in the office insisted on asking me how my shoes were, were my feet OK?, were my trousers damaged? I was quite confused by these questions and it was obvious I had done something stupid in the pub on the Friday night.

Turns out the fire in the lounge bar of the pub where we ended up looked a little small for my liking and so I decided to give the coals a prod with my foot to get more air circulating. I was of course totally hammered and after half an hour of prodding the fire someone had to take me to one side and explain that it was a gas fire and that the smell of burning shoes was putting people off their drinks….Ooops. When I finally checked the soles of my shoes in the office they were glassy smooth!

worked at a very “highclass” sports car dealers years ago.many stories of very very high speed test drives on the nearby motorway.burnouts etc etc.
best one was a new MD who decied he was so important he “borrowed” a ferrari convertable that was traded in for the weekend and rolled it into a field.wrote the car off and was off work for two weeks.
nice.

More engineering maintenance dept. fun

The electrician who was working above the false ceiling and found a big bag full womens knickers and tights.

The cleaner who everyone was “having some fun” with and discovered the list of said frolicers written on the contractors toilet wall when she went to clean them for the first time !

The cheeky YTS lad who we hoisted up using the workshop crane with a broom shoved down the arms of his overalls, then used him as a target for anything that came to hand whilst sending him along the workshop at anything from 4-25 feet off the ground. He was covered in grease , swarf you name it.

The workshop idiot who wasn’t the brightest spark by any means who became the “safety officer” and burnt his hands and arms on a steam pipe.. there is a pic of him accepting his “safety officer certificate” which massive bandages on his arms and hands…

I used to work for a large supermarket chain in the cash office and recall time locking the safe open by mistake on one occasion.

However the best I have is after a ‘good night’ out I was opening up the office the next morning. Like a sensible chap I had left my uniform in my car at work and in the early hours arrived back at work and got the key from the nightshift manager so I could get some kip in the cash office before starting work.

I crashed (passed) out in the corner of the office on some old money bags.

Cue another member of staff coming in and getting the spare office keys thinking I was late/sick. She walked into the office and seeing me in the corner and thinking I had been attacked and the office raided lets out an almighty scream and hits a panic alarm!

This scream wakes me from my slumber and I sit up like zombie…

Thinking the dead were now rising a second scream emanates from the poor lady as the rest of the people in early to open the store are running to the cash office thinking it’s under attack.

This was my first (unfortunately not last) interaction with Human Resources.

Dunno why, mind just went back to the summer of 92 0 i did a season working the bar at Pontins in Devon …
Talk about an eye opener….
Sex
Drugs
Repeat….

Favourite memory is about 10 of us out very late one evening, in the car park for the staff area.
3 folk sat down with a small production line of spilffs. Two stood holding a bed sheet high and tight whilst the rest ‘played’ volleyball! Security came around. Gave us bollocking for being loud and upsettiing the paying guests. This was commuted to half a bollocking on sharing a spliff or two…. 🙂 Halogen days….

Working at a\ brand new extension to a gp surgery, the toilet door had a code lock on it,but the person who fitted it had cut the follower bar to short, thats the bar that goes through the lock to the knob on the front and the lever on the back or inside, so shuting the door to hard would enable the follower bar to miss the slot in either the knob, or lever, went into the toilet with the practice manager, and slammed the door, all ok, then asked her what was wrong withthe lock, tried opening it and it was not moving, forgot to take a screwdiver in to unscrew it from the inside, so stuck there for an hour shouting and banging until staff heard us.

When they did they shouted back what are you 2 doing in the toilet, to whichn she responded, get us out now, they found the code and opened the door, she was red faced and sweating as she suffered from claustraphobia.

Another time took a group of psychiatric patients to a country pub near knutsford, right next to a church, lovely night etc, haveing a few drinks with the patients, suddenly one of the chaps got up and in doing so caught his foot on the table leg, knocking the table, and all the drinks over another large lady patient, who started screaming BLOODY SATAN, BLODY SATAN HAS PEED ON ME, just as the bells started ringing of the church.

The entire beer garden emptied, as more tables where knocked over, drinks spilled etc,as the punter ran away and as me and the 2 nurses tried to calm her down.

Eventually after 10 mins we had everyone back in the mini bus, and i went to the pub to apologise and give some details in case they wanted paying for the damge.

The pub was full to bursting everyone at the windows, the landlord said dont worry after i explained, i have a family memeber suffering from mental illness, and know exactly what its like.

I used to do nights at a super market on Market Street in Manchester. The guy who worked the freezer aisle was known to lift the lid off tubs of ice cream from time to time and either draw a set of cock and balls, or write a four letter swear word before replacing the lid and putting back on the shelf.

Similarly, the guy who worked on the chiller section tended to empty some of the squirts cream from canisters directly in to his mouth and then replace them on the shelf.

The talk of Pontins reminds me of a story a mate told me about his summer at Butlins as a barman… Late nights, booze, grannies buying you drinks all night, then slipping you their room numbers in case you wanted to experience a little more experience than normal *shudder*. I’m not sure he did a second season.

Working in IT since just about day 0 in my working life (as a contractor for the early part) I didn’t really get up to much myself, but the office Christmas lunch one year got reasonably out of hand after I demonstrated the use of brussel sprouts as replacement party popper payload. That and substantially more wine than the “two glass” rule allowed for (bless the catering staff!) meant that the meal went well (for me). Alas, one of my fellow contractors couldn’t handle it and spent three hours asleep at his desk before going home.

I’ve no idea whether he billed them for the time.

One Christmas party when I was working down south was at a hotel at Gatwick airport.

A couple of my mates were sharing a (twin) room, but got seperated in the drunken frenzy. The one without the room key couldn’t remember which room it was so went and crashed in his car, which was in one of the airport carparks next to the hotel.

Seems he’d also left his bag in the car as well, as he woke up next morning, in his car, in the middle of Gatwick airport, wearing his pyjamas.

Someone, somewhere must have had the CCTV for that….

Compared to some of the stories on this thread mine is more disturbing than dodgy, but anyway here’s mine.

Whilst working for Local Government in a large (approx 200 staff) building we had some rather strange posties that would deliver the internal mail.

One particular chap was commonly referred to a the whistling postman. I discovered the reason for this upon walking into the men’s toilets one day, where I discovered him stood at the urinal, both hands behind his head and whistling loudly while having a wazz.

Now luckily I had the option of using the cubicle but he did join me mid flow on more than one occasion when its a lot more difficult to escape.

Christmas… This is fairly tame, but it amuses me…

First christmas in a new job, and I really liked the office crowd, so having a great christmas do. Then the boss got a call from his boss, who was also out on their christmas do, more or less commanding him to come over to theirs. He asked for a bit of moral support and since he’s a top guy, me and another feller went along…

Got to the other party and it’s total chaos- 6 middle aged women pissed out of their skulls, falling over in the street, trying to fight the bouncers that had just kicked them out. And my boss’s boss standing there going “AH good. Reinforcements. Help me get them in taxis?”

So we did- next 20 minutes was herding cats, great fun, flagged taxis and bribed them to take the casualties home. Last one’s away and… Where’s my boss’s boss?

Turns out that as soon as we arrived, she jumped in a taxi and zoomed down to our christmas party! Meanwhile we were dealing with the aftermath of hers.

Management.

Following on from Pooks original theme and including a bicycle.

My mate Pete, a legendary bishop basher was out and about in the quiet little hamlet of Queensbury delivering the Sunday papers on his drop handle. As he cruised non handed down a foggy Fleet Lane his 15yr old mind drifted onto his favourite subject. It’s a long road so he decided to see if he could knock one out before he hit the High St.
To this day he is not sure if it was him or the elderly female dog walker who screamed the loudest 🙂

ononeorange – Member
docstar – that article is surely made up?! Termonfeckin? Plunkett? It’s straight out of Father Ted, surely?!

I’ve been to Termonfeckin **** all in it! heres the bbc news link about it, the man was an arrogant prick too.

I was working one day cabling cat5e in a Housing Executive building(dunno if you have this on mainland uk but civil service) and the guy answering the phone was really short sighted and used one of those large font keyboards and had to have his face right up to the screen to see what he was doing. He would answer his calls and ask the caller to hold, he then lifted a mobile phone sized object up to his face pressed the screen then resumed his call and put the caller through to whichever dept they wanted. I thought this was some kind of sight aid he used to look up extension numbers but no he was having a game of snooker on his iPhone and wasn’t even trying to hide what he was doing from the others in the office.

Great thread – well done to the OP for starting this one.

Here’s my ones….

Our former MD was known for having a penchant for younger ladies, he was in his 50’s, they were in their 20’s – it was well known round the office – one of my colleagues even managed to find his profile on sugardaddy dating.

At a works Christmas do one of my colleagues was chatting to the MD’s daughter (who also happened to be a director of the company) and asked her when the baby was due. She had been expecting, but had given birth about 9 months earlier, still hanging onto a bit of a post pregancy belly. Strangely enough she actually left the company before my colleague did.

Finally we were asked by a customer of ours to test/review a new product from a supplier. We wrote a less than favourable review about the product, which lost the supplier some sales. A while later our MD and the MD of the supplier were at a sales conference. The supplier MD had a heated discussion with our MD at the end of which he was invited outside to “sort this out properly” – some careful work managed to prevent this happening.

Eddie stobart wagon swerving all over the M6, as i passed i could see him knocking one out at the wheel.

Wasn’t a ginger wirey bloke by any chance?

I once made love to a beautiful woman (the wife…..my wife) whilst working late at the office. Without going into the details we did it on all 3 of the directors desks , and inadvertently left a splash of baby gravy on one of their desks. As I sat opposite him in the office , imagine my disgust as I watched him lick a tissue and wipe off said stain from his desktop….. ( the next day of course)